


Before the Storm

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genre Twist, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1244056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this prompt: <em>Slade is a werewolf, Dinah is a vampire and Roy is a ghost. They walk into a bar, order drinks, and sit down to talk about what’s wrong with the world.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Storm

The shifter was not surprised when he got to the bar to find himself the only shifter inside. This town wasn't known for his kind. It showed as the locals gave him a wide berth, wary of his temper, his strength, and the potential violence he radiated. He was only in here because one of his allies was confined to the local area, at least until the other one found whatever talisman bound him here. Still, they needed to meet up, decide their next step, and that meant coming to this stinking town of blood drinkers, ghouls, the undead, and the restless spirits. He'd just be thankful he had a decent ally in two of those despised breeds.

He thought over the pair. One was a blood drinker, a damned vampire. Of course, she hadn't been given a choice, and had been abandoned when the ones who had her had scented a werebeast in the area. Slade had started to just destroy the new-changed 'pire, but she had been a fierce companion before her change, and that had made him hesitate. She had convinced him that she could survive the change, that she would not be a reckless destroyer of true men. While she was partly outcast by her breed, she had proven to be too strong for all his ruthless teaching for any of her own kind to kill.

That she killed all who tried made him proud.

The other was a newer ally of theirs, one trapped in an existence that was anathema to his very being. The restless spirit had been a boy of her acquaintance, one who made a bad choice in friends and wound up overdosing on one of the magic-laced drugs. He was trapped now, a ghost, and came from a culture that thought of skin-riding undead as one of the vilest taboo creatures in existence. To say he hated himself was to say the sun was a mere candle.

On the heels of that thought, he glanced to the door to see the blood drinker just entering, her pale skin betraying her nature despite the trendy post-modern clothes that hid her age. At her side was the faint impression of a young man, blurred with the impact of too many presences in this confined space.

"Hello, Slade," the woman said, the flash of the faintly longer eye-teeth visible, but her nature carefully restrained by will power.

"Dinah. Roy." The shifter nodded to the silent male, understanding when he got no reply. Manifesting separate from a host was hard on the ghostwalkers, but Roy refused, except in emergencies, to ride a host.

"Hated having to call you, but there's all sorts of signs that the power situation here has destabilized." Dinah kept her voice low. "Roy went to ... well, you know he was close to the Heir." She grimaced for that, as Slade had known the young man in question as a talented acrobat before the vampire lord of the city stole him to groom as one of the blood-drinking lords. Slade nodded, temper flaring enough that the closest tables shifted warily. Dinah reached out and put her icy hand on the warm one of the shifter, offering a calming support. "Roy last went to see him, and the Heir was acting as if he was in charge...and not by the usual planned choice."

Slade glanced to the ghost, who nodded faintly. ~He's hanging on to all appearances strictly by desperation,~ came the words to go with the confirmation.

"Then something's happened to Wayne, and this whole place is about to blow sky high with the fallout." Slade frowned, looking at Dinah, wanting to tell her to get the hell out of this pit of despair, but the words died in his throat. She'd been born here, grown up here, and then there was Roy, still trapped until they found his anchor. "So, how do we tackle it?" he asked instead.

~Help Dick hold on.~ Those words were stronger in both of their minds. ~He's no more corrupted than Dinah, and that could make this city an example against the depravity of the 'pires.~

Dinah agreed, squeezing Slade's hand gently. "The three of us, working with the new Lord of the City; think of it!"

Slade weighed the options, remembered the gifted boy Dick had been, looked at proof a blood drinker could be noble, and then sighed. "I'm in, crazy as this plan's going to be in the long run."

Dinah just smiled, fangs glinting a little in the lighting. "What's new about that?" she asked, to the laughter of even her ghostly companion.


End file.
